HIST 17C Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Collective Bargaining, Calvin Coolidge, Upper Class
Dawn of the Century (late 19th-early 20th C)
Urbanization, industrialization, immigration
➔Created an entirely new society characterized by wealth polarization
◆Industrial wealth created by new industrial tycoon and poverty existing together
◆Child labor in the mill
◆Poverty also existed in the countryside
● Rich vs poor farmers
➔Development of modern American reform tradition
◆1890s saw large amount of worker protests
◆Convinced people that capitalism needed to be more fair and equitable or else
there would be a revolution
Progressivism
➔Modern american liberalism: achieving freedom through government
➔Desire to reform capitalism to make it more equitable
➔Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson created the Democratic Party
◆Seen as more necessary than ever when Wall Street crashed and widespread
unemployment
➔Identified with FDR and Johnson in 1930s
◆Wanted to create a consensus among the classes
Reform tradition
Reform is necessary if violent revolution to replace capitalism wants to be avoided
➔Change is necessary to ensure continuity
➔Reform is conservative
◆A way of preserving capitalism
Changing view of poverty
➔Shift from belief that poverty was the individual’s fault to belief that poverty was the
environment’s fault
◆The state has a responsibility to do something about it
◆Rise of welfare state that seeks to put a safety net under Americans
Growth of a strong presidency
➔Within the federal government, only the executive branch has the power to make big
businesses accountable to the public interest
◆Growth of a faith by reformers in strong presidents
Communist Success in Russia
➔Inspired communists to launch revolutions in other countries
◆Led Americans to believe that communism might soon consume all of Europe
◆Americans began to worry about the threat of the spread of Communism in the
US
Woodrow Wilson
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
➔Promised to make the world safe for democracy
➔Virtually every branch of gov’t cooperated to smash the civil liberties that we think of as
being essential to a democracy
Anti-german hysteria
➔Anyone who opposed the war was seen as an enemy
1919
➔Seattle strike (Feb)
◆Nonviolent, strikers’ goals were peaceful
◆Wanted higher wages because wages were frozen during WWI
◆Mayor of Seattle denounced the strikers as “reds” (communists)
➔April
◆bombs arrived by mail at Mayor’s office
➔May
◆Bombs blew off hands of a maid of a retired senator who advocated deportation
of radicals
➔June
◆Bombs exploded in several US cities
➔Coordinated bombings led many Americans to believe there was some kind of terrorist
conspiracy
◆Gov’t was unable to pin bombings on anyone still alive
◆People believed the communists were responsible
● Communists and anarchists both opposed private property
● Anarchists also opposed all forms of gov’t
◆Suggested to the American people, who conflated communism and anarchism:
organized anti-american group trying to seize control of the gov’t
Americans decided subversives (communists and anarchists) were at fault
➔Palmer (progressive reformer)
◆Ordered the gov’t to round up thousands of suspected communists and
immigrants, and other subversives
➔Launched America’s first full-scale war against terrorism
◆Arrests were made without any attention to civil liberties
◆No appreciation for the Bill of Rights
1920 anti-radical hysteria started to subside
➔US communists were fighting with each other so they did not pose much of a threat to
the American people
➔Threat of communism consuming Europe was declining
◆Was staying in Russia
➔Palmer predicted another wave of violence
Wall Street Explosion
➔No one took it as an attack by communists
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
➔Warren Harding said that enough had been said about communism in the US
Five legacies of red scare
Anti-communism
➔Americans believed immigrants were susceptible to communism
Anti-immigration
➔Immigration Act of 1924
◆Attempted to block southern and eastern european immigration to the United
States
➔Believed that foreigners had inherited misconceptions about the relationships of
government to the governed
◆They were “un-American”
White supremacy
➔Rise of second KKK
➔Insistence on white supremacy was heightened
◆Jews and Italian Catholics were not considered white
➔America must be kept pure (Immigration Act reflected the belief that America must be
kept pure
➔Increase in confederate monument and statue building
◆Meant to reflect the belief in white supremacy
➔Norms of segregation were hardened
➔1924 southern states tightened restrictions of who was considered white
◆Prevented whites from marrying people of another color
Mistrust of unions and decline of organized labor
➔Some business leaders preached welfare capitalism
◆Provided more welfare programs for employees in an attempt to crush unions
➔Business had tolerated labor unions during WWI
Willingness to abandon civil liberties when national security demanded it
➔Sacco and Vanzetti trial
◆Italian immigrant anarchists with no criminal record charged with murder
● Arrested in 1920 at the end of the Red Scare
◆The fact that they were anarchists and immigrants justified their execution
◆Defense claimed that the prosecution grew out of the defendants’ political
activities
● Being prosecuted for taking politically incorrect views
◆Judge Thayer told jurors that they represented the spirit of American loyalty
against alien enemies
● Jury did their American duty and found them guilty
◆Many people became interested in the case
● No one tried to say they were innocent
● Could say that they were denied a fair trial - in violation of the 6th
amendment due to anti-radicalism
◆Governor Alvin Fuller
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
